If you can’t 1-shot every match there’s no point increasing the difficulty. You lose more than you gain.
E7 is realistically the current max for farming purposes. I tried E8 for a while and occasionally had troops survive so no point slowing yourself down for a pittance more gold if any at all.
I want tokens and gold. I get tokens and gold. What I don’t one shot. I literally finish within a fraction of a second later.
If I went by your metric…E8 is an easy one shot every single single time then.
You are probably correct back then before a couple magic kingdoms got to 20 star or the campaign added +4 magic. After week 10. You’re right, E9 won’t be worth it.
Why are you (general, not necessarily awryan) farming Explore at difficulty 8 for tokens? You can’t get Nyshas at that difficulty, and even Anus show up at substantially reduced rates compared against D12.
I’m not. Difficulty 9.
Difficulty 9. Difficulty 9.
Somehow my stance about difficulty 9 is being confused despite by cheerleading it up and down this thread all day night. Lol
Tbf my point still stands about the difference in token drops between D9 and D12. You quadruple your chances of getting a Nysha, not to mention getting boss chests more frequently.
But to answer your question. I change it up to make sure that the game doesn’t get boring.
I’ll do D12 explore for a while. (Get the high end tokens.)
Take a break from explore.
Then do D9 for a while. (Get the low end tokens.)
Rinse and repeat.
I have no Mythics that I see a need to Gold level. (So even when I get Nysha Medals now I hoard them.)
Meanwhile I have shit load of troops I still need to get to gold level for eventual kingdom stars. 
D12 is obviously Zuulgoth based so it requires a lot more attention than a mindless Pho team.
This is a pretty good answer. Some variations is needed to break the cycle.
If you primarily want medals E12 is hands down the best way to go. You get more tokens per hour AND they’re higher rarity so it’s a win-win.
If you primarily want gnomes then E1 with Ironhawk is the best obviously.
If you are happy with a combination then do the highest lv explore you can 1-shot with Phoenicia.
Personally this event I’ve just been sticking with E12. Only 2 matches per minute but medals and gold are more important to me than almost anything gnomes can provide. I have a stash of over 1000 vk’s.
Everybody’s priorities are different and that’s ok. It’s still great to discuss the best strategies/teams for each of the above 3 goals.
Or u could just go hero, sunbird, forest guardian, leprechaun
99% of the time leprechaun fills sunbird, sunbird kills all on level 1
Assuming you’re a decent level
Looks like a new bug introduced as well.
Last patch fixed this for Arena.
Now not only do you have to clear a pet rescue (nearly all, no point as already mythic, waste of gnome time), you also have to quit the game and reload to get the tracker…? 
Who knows what’s a bug and what isn’t with Gems of War. But my theory is they only bothered to recode the tracker for the Arena due to the low numbers partaking in the event. So perhaps they thought the CONSTANT ability to see the tracker would help.
They do not have that concern at all when it comes to Vault Weekends. Any such QoL update is basically an act of charity on their end and they see it as such.
Xbox players can just wait until the game kicks them back to the start screen. 
I lost a Lvl 12 Boss chest. Game kicked while battle was loading. If it didn’t actually load, I feel I should get to keep my shards and refight. No dice. Off-topic. Flag if y’all want.
Three kicks in an hour and a half, so, it does kind of factor in to the speed running theme of this thread. 2 minutes per kick, minimum.
Why not farming Lvl 10 with Drakkulis Team on Pridelands? Every fight 8 seconds 2 shot 
IMO, the “red line” for 1-cast-clearing is likely set at E9.
An interesting observation is that the level increase between Explore difficulties doubles between E9 an E10 (a 20 level gap). I think that this is more of a moat that was dug to insulate E10 from being 1-cast farmable, even well into the future possibly even forever.
But… power creep, though?
Well, the outlook is rather gloomy on that. Right now, players are enjoying some significant leaps in power, because of kingdoms reaching Power 20 and Level 15, somewhat hand-in-hand. After that though… in terms of stat growth, the future is as bleak as the Drifting Sands.
As of now, all magic kingdoms except Silverglade and Zhul’Kari have already obtained their Power 20 stat boosts, so there is only +2 magic left to be obtained here.
The Underworld only has +1 magic left to give for perfect completion one all factions there have been released.
Assuming that the third map will play out similar to the Underworld as another map with factions on it (all signs and tea leaves continue to strongly point to this outcome), that’s another +2 potential magic in ~3 years’ time.
Power 30 and Level 20 for kingdoms is similarly at least ~3 years away from occurring (likely loosely tied in timing to completion of releases for the third map) for the next set of kingdom stat boosts.
Outside of some new stat mechanic or booster being released in the future, once a end-gamer has all kingdoms at Power 20 and Level 15 (within the next year easily), stat growth is going to reach almost a complete standstill for as far as the eye can see.
Unless one of remaining yet-to-be-revealed kingdoms is a magic kingdom, I’m rather dubious on E10 ever being one-shottable. And, as others have already said, if a player is in two-cast territory, they might as well be two-shotting E12.
EDIT: Thanks to @Grundulum and @Raistlin for noting that Nysha tokens can technically drop from E9. Erroneous paragraph was removed.
EDIT 2: Thanks to @Jefferson for correctly pointing out that the magic point at account rank 2000 only applies to the hero(ine) and is not a global magic stat point. Removed that bullet point from the post.
I thought E9 was the lowest difficulty for nysha.
That they do. Thanks for pointing that out. I apparently can’t read tables correctly today.
No worries. You never know when the devs are going to ninja nerf something.
@Lyrian the +1 magic from being level 2000+ only counts towards your hero. It would not count towards phoenicia or any other troop.
Good point, thanks for calling that out.
Don’t forget the 25% reduced Spell damage and/or Revive.
Then nothing works anymore with one shot lv 9/10 in Future.
An example is the new Troops “Ogress” Summon a Fortress Gate when I die. if it appears in Broken Spire then. That makes the one shot no longer possible really.